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viernes, 2 de marzo de 2018

BREAKING NEWS: David Castillo Mejia, the President of DESA, the corporation building the dam Berta was organizing against when she was assassinated, has just been arrested while attempting to flee Honduras

COPINH reports to the national and international community that moments ago David Castillo, the President of the DESA corporation and the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project, was arrested thanks to all of the work and pressure created by the solidarity and work of organizations nationally and internationally. No thanks is due to the Attorney General's office, who have tried everything possible to cover up the truth in this case.more>>>

lunes, 12 de febrero de 2018

It will soon
have been two years since the crime against our sister Berta Cáceres Flores,
bringing up again the memory of that horrible incident that was a blow to our
organization, people, country and all of humanity.

The Honduran state seeks to break the
unstoppable struggle for justice with the capture of the immediate perpetrators
and their intermediaries, but without going after the business structures and
state officials who pursued, criminalized, persecuted and assassinated our
sisters.

It is the same structure that keeps the
elite in power in Honduras and continues repressing our people and imposing
itself through force.

COPINH
calls on those in solidarity around the world to use this day to symbolically
reject the imposition of violent death upon those who defend life. For Berta
and for the hundreds of social fighters assassinated in Honduras and around the
world we demand justice.

We
call for protests, letters and actions in front of the Honduran embassies
around the world.

viernes, 2 de febrero de 2018

(HERE IN SPANISH)Today marks 23 months since the assassination of
indigenous leader Berta Cáceres and we are about to reach the second
anniversary of her transition. We remember this sister on these days, with many
people eager to know how far the case has progressed over these two years and
what has changed in Honduras with the revelation of manifold human rights
violations by extractive corporations who profit off of energy production.

As of now, COPINH continues to struggle for true
justice and to push, as a first step, to break the media silence around her
case and confront the irregularities that permeate the process.

May of this year will bring the expiration of the
preventative detention* for the eight people detained in 2016, including the
direct perpetrators of the crime as well as intermediaries such as DESA
employee Sergio Rodríguez and armed forces major Mariano Díaz who coordinated
the assassination and served as an instructor for the military police.

At this point the Honduran Attorney General and
judicial authorities are flailing around desperately to try to move through and
put a close to the case by sentencing only those who they have detained. The
final arguments are expected in the case halfway through this year.
Notwithstanding, the organization, the Honduran people and the international
community remain unsatisfied in the face of a lack of action to capture the
masterminds who are linked to the powerful and untouchable Honduran oligarchy.

It is worth mentioning that today is the swearing-in
hearing for the specialists proposed by the Attorney General to analyze the
telephone recordings and financial information in the national sentencing
tribunal, which will decide the case.

Regarding the second point about what has changed in
Honduras since her death, very little can be said. The concession remains for the
hydroelectric damn ferociously defended not only by private enterprise but also
by the renewable energy producers who continue to sew hate against the
organizations that challenge the installation of numerous deadly projects,
ruining their lucrative business.

The government wants to secure the investments of
national and international corporations in this business by approving a
deceitful law supposedly about “prior, free and informed consent for indigenous
peoples” but has been unable to take the final step after strong questioning at
a national and international level.

The power structures that protect the deadly project
against which Berta Cáceres fought have strengthened themselves with electoral
fraud, carried out to ensure continuation of the status quo and protection of
private economic interests.

What Berta Cáceres contributed to today’s Honduras is
the national uprising that continues without giving up on the same vision that
would be on at the front of Berta Cáceres’s mind: the re-foundation of Honduras
that no president will be able to carry out, that can only be carried out by
the people, the same people who didn’t give up in the streets even as they
confronted the violence of the military and their killer weapons, which is the
only path to profound change for Honduras.

In the meantime COPINH is convening the “25 years of
Life and Justice Gathering” for this 22nd-24th of March
to deepen work around the case of comrades Berta and Gustavo and talk about the
struggle to this point and what the future holds for Berta’s vision in a
country that needs it now more than ever.

*The preventative detention can be extended just once
for six more moths, which would expire in November of this year.

lunes, 29 de enero de 2018

25 years ago in La Esperanza, Intibucá, Honduras, the Civil
Council of Grassroots Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) was founded
as an organization to defend the territorial rights of the Lenca people.

It was born in the midst of a bloody era at the beginning of
the free trade agreements and the outright concession of territories, which
gave rise to the beginning of struggles to reclaim Honduras and Latin America.
In that moment of crisis and historic change COPINH made a seed of rebellion
grow in indigenous towns and communities.

At present, our organization of many communities has
traversed a tremendous path of learning and resistance in the face of systems
of domination that sustain the plunder of our territories and the exploitation
of their populations. These have been years of great repression, hard struggles,
starting from zero, but without a doubt this has been one of the most important
political and social struggles in Honduras. It has meant many victories and
advances as peoples. COPINH today confronts many challenges and re-encounters
with COPINH’s mission in order continue the struggle at this moment.

The work and thought of our sister Berta has clearly left its
mark. She pushed this project of struggle strongly, defying the multiple oppressions
that befall people, expressed today in voracious national and transnational
corporations who enrich themselves with the thriving business of energy
production based in the plunder of communities and who assassinated her for
that struggle two years ago.

In commemoration of the 2nd anniversary of our sister
Berta’s transition - which still remains in impunity even though the
masterminds are known - we reaffirm the
demand of the Lenca people for truth, justice and deep structural changes for
our people and for Honduras.

To demand justice for Berta, to breath life into this seed
of freedom, and so that in our Honduras we can plant other seeds of freedom
that flourish in the midst of profound oppression, we invite you to join us in La
Esperanza, Intibucá from March 22nd-24th, 2018. We await you with
joyful rebellion, music, street action and dialogue amongst those who want a
future of life, justice and respect for the sovereign will of the people.

In this encoutner we will talk about the case of our sister
and we will link the distinct efforts to forge a strong path of struggle for
the re-foundation of Honduras. That is what will guarantee the sovereignty of
the people to decide without imposition and corrupt authoritarianism in order
to truly achieve justice.

sábado, 20 de enero de 2018

(EN ESPAÑOL)Tonight, while driving home, compañero Edwin Espinal was captured by members of the police along the Fuerzas Aramadas Boulevard in Tegucigalpa for his participation in the protests days before against the imposition of fraud and dictatorship by Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH). Edwin Espinal is a well-known figure in the struggle against the dictatorial regime imposed since the 2009 coup d'etat in Honduras. His capture stems from orders by JOH the dictator to repress, demonize and criminalize the dignified protest of people who oppose the imposition of violence and betrayal.

Edwin's capture comes days after having been victim of a demonization campaign in social media, just like what has happened to our brothers Martín Fernández and Víctor Fernández from the Broad Movement for Justice and Dignity (MADJ), as well as Father Melo from Radio Progreso among a long list of sisters and brothers in struggle against the regime.

The actions by the JOH government seek to sew fear and consternation amongst the mobilized people, as has been demonstrated by the brutal displays of force by the military police and the illegal statements by FUSINA, trying to interfere with the basic right to protest.

Nonetheless, the strength of our cry as a Honduran people against the illegality and illegitimacy of JOH is clear and we are sure that nobody will rest until he falls.

While JOH's spurious electoral tribunal certifies his illegal victory, they capture and criminalize compatriots who struggle for truth and dignity.

They use an iron fist against the people, but for foreign interests they kneel down as low as they can.

COPINH demands Edwin Espinal be released immediately and holds the Honduran state accountable.

We call on the national and international community to denounce these actions of criminalization along with the series of assassinations, aggressions, campaigns of stigmatization and brutal repression by the state against a mobilized people.

COPINH calls for a deepening of national mobilization against fraud and dictatorship.

The more they repress, the more we struggle and organize.

January 19th, 2018.

With the ancestral strength of Berta, Lempira, Mota and Etempica our voices rise, full of life, justice, dignity, freedom and peace!

martes, 19 de diciembre de 2017

(here in spanish)
The Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) DOES NOT
recognize the statement made yesterday by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) which claims Juan Orlando Hernández as the winner. This decision represents the final consummation of the electoral fraud through which they seek to make a mockery of the Honduran people’s will expressed on November 26th, which is to expel the dictatorship and its corrupt cabal from the presidency. The fraud carried out throughout the process is clear and evident, starting with the illegality of Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH)’s candidacy itself and especially in the hours following the closure of the polls when the opposition’s victory became apparent. With their timid statements the OAS and EU have corroborated what the people have already declared in the streets - all of the irregularities of the corrupt electoral process and Honduran state make clear that this is the imposition of a dictatorship. The statement by the TSE is yet another affront to the Honduran people and we denounce that all of its members who were involved should be prosecuted.

*COPINH calls for the permanent mobilization and organization in the streets of the Lenca and Honduran people as a whole to make the legitimate demand that JOH immediately step down, or, short of that, for there to be a new electoral process with guarantees and transparency, supervised by the international community, beyond the OAS and also including representation of the Honduran grassroots social movements.

*COPINH demands that the armed forces and Honduran police immediately cease their repression against the Honduran people who are exercising their constitutional right to protest a government based on imposition!

*COPINH calls on the international community to denounce the violent and murderous actions by agents of the state’s repressive forces, which have already taken 22 Honduran lives, and to push for the governments of the world to refuse recognition of the criminal declaration by Honduras’s TSE.

*COPINH and the Lenca people are rising up, not in defense of a party or a candidate, but rather in defense of dignity itself.

For the blood spilled by Berta Cáceres and all of our ancestors, we demand justice! We demand the downfall of the killer regime!

With the ancestral strength of Berta, Iselaca, Etempica and Mota we raise our voices full of life, justice, freedom, dignity and peace.

viernes, 15 de diciembre de 2017

(AQUI ESPAÑOL)
COPINH communicates the following about the repression suffered today in the peaceful roadblock on the road that travels between La Esperanza and Siguatepeque.

In the early morning hours of today, December 15, 2017, a roadblock was set up on the road between La Esperanza and Siguatepeque as part of the protests around the country. Without delay, members of the National Police from La Esperanza, and the military, presumably the Battalion of Engineers of Siguatepeque, arrived to violently evict the protest using tear gas. Faced with this, the people at the road block including Bertha Zúniga and other members of the General Coordination of COPINH headed to the mountainous area to flee the repression and were pursued for a significant time. The violent incidents included use of tear gas, hitting people with batons, and rock throwing by the repressive forces of the State against the protesters.

COPINH denounces the excessive persecution with the objective of realizing detentions, intimidating, and beating the protesters. Today’s repression adds to the violent actions by the repressive forces on previous days against the protests between La Esperanza and Siguatepeque which have included excessive use of force to evict the roadblocks, intimidation, taking of photographs for persecution, illegal detentions, illegal retentions, tracking people, threats of rape and murder, and the use of live bullets on Monday, December 11, 2017.

martes, 5 de diciembre de 2017

(HERE IN SPANISH)
For over a week, the people have defended in the streets the will that they expressed at the polls. The flagrant theft that they want to carry out through fraud is undeniable. The people know it and the international community should understand that the narrow interests of Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) and the elite powers that he represents alone are maintaining the crisis by refusing to accept defeat.

It has been clearly demonstrated how the leadership of the National Party, which includes the President of the Supreme Electoral Council David Matamoros, have committed fraud in the presidential elections in order to illegally keep themselves power. Therefore, results from this institution are not and will not be reliable nor in any way credible, and the people have shown as much in the streets.

COPINH is clear that the hundreds of mobilizations, highway blockades, peaceful protests and expressions of resistance go beyond this electoral process. They represent a cry of the people as a whole to move beyond the hatred, violence and submissiveness that have characterized the years of JOH’s government and his other coup-supporting predecessors, years inundated with corruption, impunity, assassinations, approval of spurious laws, handing over of territories, illegal concessions, and poverty and hunger for the majority.

The struggle in the territories and in the streets is the key action in these moments and must continue. The dignity and strength of the people’s struggle in the streets is what has led the National Police and the COBRA forces to set down the arms they were using against the people. We salute this dignified action and call on the armed forces and other repressive state bodies to understand their role as part of the people and respect the actions of that people.

It is clear that the call in the streets is not just about recognizing the obvious electoral victory of Salvador Nasralla, but is above all the cry of the Honduran people to say JOH MUST GO! It is no longer about him recognizing the victory, it is about him stepping down from the presidency and thereby ending the crisis to which our Honduras has been subjected.

COPINH calls on the international community to take all pertinent measures to ensure that JOH’s desperation to maintain power does not lead to more spilling of blood by the Honduran people.

As such, the Lenca people, organized in COPINH demand that:
JOH’s government immediately hand over the presidency to a temporary government of national consensus until January 27th, 2018, the day in which Salvador Nasralla will be seated as President.
The resistance in favor of recognition of the people’s will as expressed at the polls strengthen and consolidate through territorial organization.
That the international community take a side and activate the pertinent mechanisms so that JOH’s desperation to maintain power does not lead to further spilling of blood by the Honduran people.

For the blood shed by Berta Cáceres and all of our ancestors, we demand justice! We demand that end of this killer regime!

With the ancestral strength of Berta, Iselaca, Etempica and Mota we raise our voices full of Life, Justice and Peace.

miércoles, 29 de noviembre de 2017

The Civic
Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) calls for
the respect of Honduran people’s will who took a position against continuity
and dictatorship on November 26 and has communicated the decision to get the
dictator Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH) out of the Presidency.

COPINH is a
popular organization that fundamentally believes in community and grassroots
political processes that make political participation a daily struggle and not
just a call every four years to change executioners. However, despite all the
manipulation, vote buying, clientelism and deceit, the Honduran people have
clearly stated that they don’t want to continue to live in the violent
situation imposed by the JOH government which represents a continuation of the
2009 coup d’etat and is an ally of the oligarchic economic structures. The
people have expressed, even in the highly controlled and manipulated electoral
process, that this coup-supporting, racist, extractivist government only represents
hatred and death.

The
Honduran people don’t forget that this government is complicit in the
assassination of our General Coordinator Berta Cáceres and have expressed this
belief in thousands of public protests and in the most recent, last Sunday. The
people know the complicity of JOH’s government with DESA’s owners and the
powers that be - unpunished murderers that are protected by a cloak of impunity
that the corrupt and colonialist state enables.

The same hate and fear that persecuted and assassinated Berta is the
same that wants to impose a dictatorship by means of violence and fraud. What
has occurred in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and the divulgation of
votes is a large crude lie that reflects the dirty, lying nature of the state.
The delay in the divulgation of results, like the ambiguities in their public
announcements are a clear sign of the development of fraud. The sudden
reduction of the percentage differences favoring JOH, is also a demonstration
of this.

The structural changes that this country needs cannot be achieved
through a voting process but instead through means of liberating practices of
our peoples, in the defense of our territories, our autonomies, and living
alternatives to capitalism in which life, dignity and liberty come before
business and profit. For this reason, our organization will remain vigilant in
the fulfillment of the will of the people.

COPINH calls to defend the decision of the people to avoid dictatorship.
We call on all popular and grassroots organizations to not only defend their
decision but to unite and pronounce in favor of the construction of the society
we want. We convoke the entire international community to be observers of the
events that will unfold in the coming days, to avoid a blood bath in what may
be a new coup d’etat perpetrated by the same elite political class.

With the ancestral force of Berta, Lempira Mota, Iselaca y Etempia, we
raise our voices full of life, justice, liberty, dignity and peace.

jueves, 16 de noviembre de 2017

Mr. LEAHY. Mr.
President, I want to speak about a subject that many Senators are
aware of and should be deeply concerned about.

As we remember, in the early morning hours of
March 3, 2016, Honduras lost one of
its most courageous and charismatic indigenous leaders,
Berta Caceres.

Ms. Caceres was the general coordinator of the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of
Honduras, COPINH.

She was gunned down
by assassins in her home in the village of La Esperanza,
Intibuca.

Berta Caceres spent her life defending
indigenous rights, particularly to
land and natural resources. In 2015, she won the prestigious Goldman
Environmental Prize for her outstanding activism and
leadership. She and COPINH had been supporting land struggles
throughout western Honduras, and because of that--because she was exercising
rights guaranteed by Honduran law and international
law--she and the communities that she and COPINH supported were the
frequent targets of death threats.

A network of fake accounts tweeted a smear campaign against Berta Cáceresand COPINH three months before Berta was murdered. This was just one component of a larger campaign that was waged against COPINH for years due to their opposition to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project.

A new report by an independent team of attorneys linked Berta’s assassination to the highest levels of Capital Energy Development SA de CV (DESA), the company whose hydroelectric dam project Berta and COPINH were protesting. MORE>>>

martes, 7 de noviembre de 2017

Twenty months have passed since the
night of the vile assassination of Berta Cáceres, General Coordinator of the
Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. During this time
the Honduran authorities have demonstrated a lack of political will to
prosecute those who ordered her murder, confront the structural causes of her
death, or end the persecution of those who defend their territory in Honduras.

Those who wanted to take the life
of Berta Cáceres and thereby try to end to the fierce struggle of COPINH and
the Lenca people have been hiding behind a cloak of impunity. Nonetheless, with
just minimal access to information, an international group of advisors was able
to conduct an independent investigation and unveil the network of corruption,
cruelty, persecution and hatred behind her murder, and the perpetrators at the
center of it, members of the DESA corporation.

In view of the above, the
undersigned support COPINH’s demands to the Honduran authorities with respect
to:

1. The arrest, trial and
conviction of those who ordered and planned the murder of Berta Cáceres and the
persecution of COPINH.

2. Cancellation of the concession along
the Gualcarque River granted to Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (DESA), which the
GAIPE report clearly shows formed part of a criminal and murderous network.

3. Assurance of a true investigation
into the crime against Berta Cáceres, through the dismissal of all the people
involved in the case and the creation of a new investigation team subject to oversight
by international organizations.

4. The adoption of effective and
immediate measures of safety and protection for the legal team, COPINH, and
Berta's family, who are involved in the case in pursuit of justice.

sábado, 4 de noviembre de 2017

(EN ESPAÑOL)On March 4th of
2016, just a few hours after the assassination of our Coordinator Berta
Cáceres, COPINH and the daughters and son of our sister denounced that her
assassination stemmed from the struggle that she lead against the DESA
corporation because of the Río Blanco community’s opposition to the Agua Zarca
project of death.

Today, 20 months after her
assassination, the investigators from GAIPE have corroborated with the upmost
possible objectivity the unequivocal link between this killer corporation, its
owners, directors and employers in the persecution, criminalization, and
stigmatization that she suffered, as well as the planning, coordination and
execution of the killing.

The corroboration of the
actions leading to her assassination doesn’t come from witnesses or hypotheses.
It comes from the words of the actors themselves, from their phone
conversations, text messages and WhatsApp messages. They implicated themselves.
The key information comes from their own words.

The information analyzed
by GAIPE is the same that the Attorney General has had in its possession since
at least May 2nd, 2016, which means that for over a year and a half
the authorities had the proof and have not had even a minimal inclination to go
after the plotters. A mantle of impunity envelops the whole investigation, as we
have denounced since the beginning. All of the irregularities, the theft of
information, the lack of transparency, the illegalities, the setbacks and
suspensions of hearings have now been revealed to be the Honduran Attorney
General’s office trying to cover up those who plotted the crime, obviously
pressured by the executive and the business groups behind the assassination.

It shows once again that
the State has been taken over by a murderous mafia and that we, the Honduran
people, and especially the indigenous peoples, are its victims. It shows once
again that the economic elites who benefited from the 2009 coup d’état think
that they can do whatever they want without having to pay the consequences.

COPINH is not opposed to
development in Honduras, what we oppose is this “development” that means the
death of our communities, our identity and our territories. We oppose deceitful
people filling their pockets at the expense of our dead, at the expense of the
death of Berta Cáceres and all of those of us who struggle against this unjust
system where the majority is repressed for the benefit of a small economic
elite.

The production of
supposedly “renewable energy” or “clean energy” are just the cheap words of
businessmen who see energy production as a business and are willing to roll
over any and everything, including the law and the people, in order to maximize
their profits.

The assassination of Berta
Cáceres will not remain in impunity. COPINH, the Lenca people and all dignified
people in Honduras and the world will fight until the final consequences for
their to be justice, for the plotters to be punished and so that no more of
these deaths occur. So that as peoples we can continue to defend our
territories.

The corporation Desarrollos
Energéticos S.A. led by David Castillo, members of the Atala Zablah family, and
other directors, the builder of the Hydroelectric Project of death Agua Zarca, financed
by the CABEI, FMO and FinnFund banks, supported by USAID, SERNA (MiAmbiente),
Banco Ficohsa, Voyth Hydro-Siemens, the armed forces of Honduras, the National
Police and private security forces, the COHEP and the AHER, was the corporation
that assassinated Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores. We have said it since the
beginning and it has been confirmed by the recent investigation.

Because of this, COPINH demands:

1. The capture,
prosecution and punishment of all of those who ordered and plotted the
assassination of Berta Cáceres and the persecution of COPINH.

2. The cancellation of the
concession along the Gualcarque River to the criminal and murderous corporation
Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. DESA.

3. Assurances of a real
investigation into the crime against Berta Cáceres, by removing all of those
involved in the case and creating a new investigation team under the oversight
of international organizations.

4. The adoption of
effective and immediate measures of protection and security for the legal team,
COPINH and the family, all of whom are involved in the case seeking justice.

We call on Honduran
society not to allow this case to remain in impunity, justice for Berta means
justice for our people and for the many people assassinated at the hands of
corporate and State criminals.

We call on Honduran
organizations and grassroots social movements to continue forward in defense of
our territories and lives. To demonstrate that Berta didn’t die, she multiplied.

We call on international
solidarity to join us in these demands for justice.

Berta lives on,
COPINH is strong!

What do we
demand? Justice!

Punish the
plotters!

#DesaAsesina

#20MesesSinJusticia

#JusticiaParaBerta

#DondeEstanLosAutoresIntelectales

With the ancestral
strength of Berta, Iselaca, Lempira, Mota and Etempica we raise our voices full
of life, justice, dignity, freedom and peace!

Rio Blanco to Juan Dumas

JUSTICE FOR BERTA

With Honduras - In English

2015 Goldman Prize winners

Berta Cáceres South and Central America 2015 Goldman Prize Recipient

In a country with growing socioeconomic inequality and human rights violations, Berta Cáceres rallied the indigenous Lenca people of Honduras and waged a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam.http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/berta-caceres/

DOCUMENTS

How Many More? 116 Environmental Defenders Were Murdered Last Year, Mostly in Latin America

New report shows killings of environmental activists are increasing, with indigenous communities hardest hit. We shine a spotlight on Honduras - the most dangerous country to be an environmental defender
https://www.globalwitness.org/campaigns/environmental-activists/how-many-more/